Mercenary
by Ishie
Summary: They are just moments in time. Do they mean what you think? 100 Jayne drabbles for the lj community challenge at joss100.
1. gray

**prompt: cemetery

* * *

**Skinny gray stones in small gray mounds.

All around him, women are wailing and men are staring with hollowed eyes. Matty slips a gloved hand around his and holds on tight.

The shepherd's saying words and Ma ducks her head, hands clasped in a ball under her chin. Her eyes are squeezed tight and her mouth is moving in time with the preacher's.

The only color in the whole place is in the flower he tucked in his pocket before they came here. Nobody can see it, but he knows it's there. He can feel the faded yellow petals burning against his leg, melting into his skin and bone.

He closes his eyes. He doesn't want them to see the color come bursting out of him, like the scream that's wailing up through his belly only to be trapped behind his teeth.

The preacher's done talking and he feels his ma's cold hand come down on his neck. Matty tugs at his hand, pulling him away.

He opens his eyes and the washed-out hills flare in a sudden rush of color - blues and purples and reds - then quickly fade back to gray. 


	2. blinks

**prompt: blood

* * *

**He blinks.

The six figures standing over him disappear. In their place loom three men, as tall as the sky.

He thinks _numbers the same the hits and the men_

_One_. The fist landed on the right side of his head with a gorawful crunch. He thought he heard his ma yelling in the ear on that side, but when he shook his head, it faded into a ringing noise. It sounded like the bell they used to ring on Sundays.

_Two_. That one pushed all the air out of his body so fast that he thought everything in his stomach was going to come up with it. He can still feel the sick burn in his throat. The whiskey tasted like that going down, only with smoother edges and a fire that kindled in his belly.

_Three_. The fist flew in his face while he was still doubled over. He felt more than heard the sickening crunch of cartilage giving way. Tasted the crimson gush in the back of his throat. Saw the sky falling away at the edge of the world.

Their laughter slams into his body as hard as their feet.

He thinks _stay down don't move 'this too shall pass'_

Ears still ringing, he hears his ma again, whispering in his ear. She drowns the laughter in her tears.

He blinks.


	3. stupid

**prompt: library

* * *

**"Jayne Cobb! I tole ya t' sit yer ass in tha' chair!"

He's almost as tall as she is, but her hand's wrapped in the back of his shirt like an iron claw. He struggles to get away from her and only succeeds in twisting further into her grip.

"But I wanna go outside! That stuff's stupid!" He can't keep the whine out of his voice and he hears Matty giggle somewhere just outside the door.

"Boy, if I'da wanted such a stubborn fool for a son, I'da married a mule." She hauls him back into the kitchen and releases his shirt.

He slumps his shoulders and looks at the floor.

"Sit!" she thunders and he drags his feet over to the table and slouches into the chair.

She stands over him for a minute, thumping her hand against her thigh. He bends his head closer to the book.

"Stupid ruttin' stories... don't care what the hell happened on Earth-That-Was," he mumbles.

She cuffs him on the back of the head. "Watch yer mouth."

He scowls. "Yes'm."

"Them books gotta go back next week. Least ya can do's read 'em proper."


	4. bitter

**prompt: first

* * *

**The sixteenth time it happened was in his bedroom late at night. He shook in his narrow bed and waited for the sun to come up and chase away the darkness that smothered him.

It was raining the fourth time. He stood under the defeated little tree by the pharmacy and watched the drops falling from his fingertips.

He doesn't remember the twenty-first time very well. They found him curled in a gutter, moaning with every breath. Matty says he sounded poetical.

Numbers fifteen, eighteen and thirty will never fade from his mind. Blind-drunk, reeling, he could taste and smell and hear everything that happened. He's still not sure they weren't real.

The second time, he could smell the smoke in his nose even though he was swimming ten feet under the surface of the pond.

He packed up his things and kissed his ma goodbye after the twenty-third. Hopped the first transport heading for parts unknown. He thought he might have a chance of losing it, out there in the black.

He can't remember how it began, but he won't have the chance to remember how it ends.

The ninety-eighth time, Jayne knows it's for real. He can't hear or see or smell. There's no texture to it, no sensation racing through his body. He tastes it, though. It's bitter and cool, like the lemonade Ma used to make during the summer.

He's seen his death nearly a hundred times over, but he's never believed it until now. 


	5. blasts

**prompt: dawn

* * *

**The sun that trickles through the heavy clouds doesn't do much to brighten anything at all and the nights are hardly darker than the days. They rely on the banged-up old horn that blares at every shift change - once in the morning, twice in the afternoon and three short blasts in the middle of the night. 

He thinks he hates the night warning the most. That's the one that's supposed to tell Pa to come home.

Ma waits up every night, sitting in her chair by the fireplace. He's got more hats and gloves and scarves and socks than anybody else he knows.

The two bursts of the horn in the afternoon aren't so bad. When he was little, it meant that Matty was coming home from the little schoolhouse where they got to eat fresh fruit sometimes.

Now that he's older, it means a chance to escape the staring and the laughter that follows him to every corner of the little building. There's never any fresh fruit, not even a wormy apple, now that they've got the new teacher. Just whispers of 'dummy' and 'fatty' that stick to his skin until he runs long and hard enough that they slide off.

The horn in the morning means a hot breakfast and his pa sleeping on the couch and Ma, humming under her breath if it was a good night and giving him hugs when it wasn't.

Sometimes he gets up just before the horn goes off and sneaks outside to watch the men walking across town.

He wonders what it's like in Other Places. Ma remembers waking to the sun, warm on her face.

He wonders if anything here ever feels like that.


	6. paid

**prompt: alley

* * *

**Her name was Mei Waters and she cornered him behind the pharmacy after school one day.

He remembers the feel of the bricks against his back. A drop of icy water fell from the roof and trickled down his neck into the collar of his coat. A crumpled up poster for Blue Sun Ice Cream rustled under his feet.

She tasted like fruit. He doesn't recollect if he kissed her back, but he saw the look in her eyes when she turned away.

He'll never forget the sound of her voice.

"I did it. Pay up, Charlie."

He pretends he doesn't see it, but her eyes stare at him out of all of their faces until he hands over the credits.

None of them taste like fruit. 


	7. dive

**prompt: water

* * *

**Matty taught him how to swim one summer day when the sun actually broke through the clouds long enough to warm up the world. Ma sat on the bank of the pond and laughed while they splashed and dunked each other.

He taught himself how to dive one day after he'd run all the way home from school. Didn't bother to take off his clothes, just climbed up on the rocks and jumped and jumped until he thought he'd never get it right. The skin under his clothes burned from dozens of belly-floppers. One last time, he scurried up the side of those rocks and trembled at the peak. He stared down at the dark pond and held his breath, held his hands over his head, held his hope in his throat.

He sliced through the water head-first, arms outstretched, feet kicking. He swam all the way to the other side of the pond. When he climbed out, he wiped the hair out of his eyes and grinned and ran home. 


	8. lenore

**prompt: fire

* * *

**Grammy taught him how to shoot when he was eight. She let him use the little pearl-handled derringer she kept under her pillow at night and made him promise not to tell Ma. She said when he got big enough, she'd show him how to clean the revolver.

Every Sunday, he ran to her house after church while Ma and Matty and Pa went home to make supper. Sometimes, she gave him cookies she baked her own self and let him play with Grampa's old toy soldiers.

The best days were the ones they spent tramping down weeds in her backyard and chasing rabbits and squirrels out of the bushes. The first time they brought meat for supper, he couldn't tell anybody but he would swear he'd never tasted anything better - not even the orange Matty brought home from school once.

When she died, he was seventeen. He didn't spend Sunday afternoons at her house anymore. As soon as the preacher closed up his book, he took off for the roughest end of town and mingled with the pilots who drank there. They slapped him on the back and bought endless rounds of beer or whiskey and told him stories about worlds he'd never even heard of.

She left him a letter on her best paper. He opened and read it in the backyard where only the squirrels and the rabbits could see him cry. When he was done, he folded it up neatly into the envelope and tucked it in his shirt. He carried it with him until the night he got rumbled on Persephone.

He walked through her house, running his hands over her pictures and gewgaws and stirring up dust. The derringer was under her pillow, right where she left it that last night. The revolver was at the back of the drawer where she kept the family Bible.

He left the derringer with his ma when he was nineteen and bound for the black. He promised himself that the revolver wouldn't leave his side until he saw his Grammy again. It was the least he could do for the woman who taught him everything he knew. 


	9. smart

**prompt: school

* * *

**He knows he's not smart. He hears the whispers - even the ones that aren't meant to reach his ears.

When he has to read out loud, he stumbles over the words. His voice trembles like a leaf and a flush of shame colors the skin from his face to his toes.

Matty says, "He's my brother! Don't you say nothing bad about him!" and tells him stories that they can't read in books.

He's hopeless at math. He's all right with sums and subtractions 'cause he just pretends it's money and if he doesn't get it right, he won't have any to buy food. Anything more complicated than that and his brain shrinks up like a cobweb.

Pa says, "Don' worry none - jist know 'nough so's ya don' git cheated," and ruffles his hair with the hand that's not holding a bottle.

Sometimes he pretends that the class is just a race and he's the tortoise and if he just keeps plodding along, he'll beat all those kids who point and laugh at him.

Ma says nothing, but she hugs him close and whispers, "My precious baby," in his hair.

He can field-strip Grammy's revolver in less than a minute and he's getting faster all the time but that's not any kind of learning that makes you smart.

Grammy says, "There's all kindsa learnin' an' not knowin' how t' take care o' you and yours is just plain dumb."

When a man offers him a job a week after his fourteenth birthday, he tells the teacher he's done and walks away. He holds his head high and uses the money to buy cotton yarn in all the colors of the rainbow.

He knows he's not smart, but all the books in all the worlds couldn't do what he does. If there are whispers now, he never hears them. 


	10. first

**prompt: heart

* * *

**The first time he dressed one of his own kills, he thought he was going to throw up all over his hands. The blood and sweat made the knife too slippery to hold and he dropped it on the ground at his feet.

The first time he went hunting by himself, he crouched in a tree and stared down the scope of the rifle until tears ran down his face. He aimed for the chest but didn't pull the trigger until long after the buck had bounded away.

The first time he shot a man, he was dry-eyed and iron-bellied. He watched the man's life pump out of the hole in his chest and counted credits in his head. 


	11. shadows

**prompt: yesterday

* * *

**"Matty?" 

"_What_, Jayne?"

"How come Ma's always singin' sad songs?"

"What're ya talking about? No, she don't."

"Yeah-huh, does too! She's always singin' about somebody dyin' or runned off or fightin' and killin'. She sings 'em real good but they's always _sad_."

"I dunno. Maybe she just likes 'em."

"Ya think so?"

"Maybe. They're purty, though, ain't they?"

"Yeah, guess so. ... Matty?"

"Yeah?"

"D'ya think she sings sad songs 'cuz she's sad?"

"What's she got to be sad about? We gotta roof over our heads, don't we? Plenty o' food on the table and Pa's been workin' steady--"

"Yeah, but maybe... Maybe she's not sad about _now_, maybe she's sad about somethin' _before_."

"Whaddaya mean _before_?"

"I dunno, like before she came here an' married Pa an' had us. Like that world where she was before with th' sunlight an' flowers."

"I dunno. Maybe. Go to sleep."

"But, Matty--"

"I mean it. If ya don't go to sleep, the Creeper'll getcha."

"_Fine_."

"Jayne?"

"Yeah?"

"Maybe we'll go find her some flowers in the mornin', if ya want."

"Okay. G'night."

"G'night."


	12. special

**prompt: today

* * *

**He sits at a table in the corner of the bar, back against the wall. He's wearing fewer weapons than normal, just Lenore strapped to his thigh and a couple of knives tucked under his clothes. One large hand spins an empty bottle on the table while the other is clamped around a fat cigar.

It's just one of them rare days he gets to spend planet-side. Nothing special out here in the black, where the days don't matter so much when you got nothing to measure them against.

He watches the girls dancing in the middle of the room, eyes the men drinking in little groups. Most of 'em he could take, no trouble, but there's a couple of big bastards who might make him work up a sweat.

He lets go of the bottle and bends his arm to take another drink of whiskey.

He's spent as many years out here as he did at home now. Sometimes, late at night, while he's listening to that gorawful snoring, he wonders if he did right by leaving.

But, he's made enough the last few years to send home to Ma without feeling the pinch. Matty's living at home again, what with the poor health and all, so he tries to send extra whenever he can and sometimes even when he really can't. Pa's still working, still spending too many credits at the bar.

He knows he's done right by 'em by way of money all these years, but still, he wonders.

Ma sent him another package. She made him a new scarf and wrapped it around one of Gramps's old toy soldiers.

Ain't much use for either of 'em -- Marco keeps taking jobs that bring 'em to the hottest, dryest, most God-forsaken backwater planets and he ain't played with toys for longer than he's been flying between worlds.

He drains the last of the golden liquid in his glass. The waitress who's been hovering around his table reappears and makes him an offer he'd be crazy to refuse. He staggers out of the bar with one arm looped over her shoulders and the other sticking close to Lenore. One quick little tumble (hell, maybe two) and then he'll head back to the boat. Marco's got a job lined up -- something about relieving some real amateurs of their burdensome credits.

This is his birthday.

Happy birthday to him. 


	13. sneak

**prompt: tomorrow

* * *

**Ma liked to dream out loud about wives and grandbabies and family suppers. "Someday," she'd say, "ya won't know what hit ya. Wake up an' find yerself surrounded with enough love that it don't matter where ya end up. That's what family does t' a body."

He never paid her no nevermind. Boys've got other things on their mind than settling down and starting families, is all. Important things, like frogs and squirrels and who can run fastest.

When he stopped being a boy, different things kept him busy: whiskey and credits and who can shoot further.

'Sides, he only had one family, no matter how many worlds away they were.

They sneak up on him at times, them dreams she had for him. They sneak up on him when he's done something he knows ain't right. Like now.

The words rattle around in his head, hiding behind more important things like _how'm I gonna get outta here_ and _she can't not_ and _I got stupid_...

He ain't never been big on emotions and feelings and the like. They make things messy, fool with your head so's you don't know whether you're coming or going. People get killed that way.

It ain't like he's looking to get out of his life. He knows there's no way he'd settle long enough to find a wife and raise a passel of kids. Be ready for a bughouse inside a year, easy.

But maybe that wasn't what Ma meant. _Ya won't know what hit ya_, she said.

He curls up against the blast doors and shrugs a little deeper into his coat. Soon, somebody'll notice he ain't around and come looking for him. They do things like that all the time on this boat. Drove him crazy at first but now he don't mind too much.

He thinks about that family he's never going to have, about the house he'll never own. His future stretches out before him, full of pain and blood and bullets and laughter and shared jokes and nosy folk.

They'll be plenty flush once they move some of the stuff they picked up at the hospital. Maybe he'll buy something for the boat for a change.

Apples, maybe. 


	14. smile

**prompt: sunlight

* * *

**There's something about her that's just so _shiny_. Gets on his nerves something awful, but she's so cute and cheerful all the time that he can't help it.

The first time he met her was when he was stowing his gear in his new bunk. He was sitting at the desk and staring at the bulkhead next to his bed, trying to figure out if he could rig up some kind of gun rack to go there.

The hatch opened and he stiffened a little. He was pretty sure it was the captain, coming to tell him that maybe this was a mistake and they'd let him off at the next moon they passed - no harm, no foul.

The feet that were coming down the ladder sure didn't belong to the captain. Neither did the voice. They matched, he remembered thinking but wasn't sure why.

For a few seconds, all he saw was pink slippers and gray-green coveralls and then the rest of her dropped into view.

Her smile lit up the little bunk and her voice called to mind the stories his Ma used to tell about growing up on Beaumonde.

She was holding a plate of food out to him, saying something about _welcome to the ship_ and _she's a good girl - gets us where we need to be_ and _don't mind the captain, he's such a grouch_.

He doesn't really remember what they talked about, but he's pretty sure he made a clumsy pass that she turned down with a smile. She just patted his arm and took the empty plate back up the ladder and somehow left the warmth behind. 


	15. horrors

**prompt: darkness

* * *

**He's never seen what they do to folk before today, but he's heard all the stories.

There was an murder in town when he was a child. His parents tried to keep them from knowing anything, but words have a way of slipping through the cracks and filling up the ears of little kids. Words like _murder_ and _rape_ and _wife and baby_ and _blood_ and _sin_ and _hellfire_ that have little meaning for him beyond the fear and disgust he hears in his Pa's voice.

The words crept out of his ears at night and covered him like a second skin until he couldn't take the chill anymore and snuck into bed with Matty. He curled up under the covers and hid himself in the warmth of another body until the words faded in the light.

They went to the funeral, stood in a clutch of black-garbed bodies and listened to the preacher's words of eternal peace and freedom. Matty held his hand and shared some of that precious warmth.

After he flew off into the black, he ran into all kinds of sin and temptation. He shot and was shot. Wounded and was wounded. He killed and survived. He's done all manner of things that secured him a spot in Hell, but even the darkest parts of his soul tremble before the horrors in front of him.

_It don't make no damn sense_ is the only phrase that turns in his mind over and over. He can't even concentrate on the fear and the sick that makes his hands shake as they stack bodies like cordwood. _No damn sense_ escapes his lips and they mutter in agreement and he's thankful because it means they can't hear the screaming that wells up inside him.

The doctor doesn't look any better than he feels, but the kid tries to wall it up behind his surgeon's mask. Jayne can see the helplessness falling from his eyes, though, every time he reaches for a body and comes up with only a part. 


	16. right

**prompt: friend

* * *

**When he was a kid, he was _Fatty_ and _Dummy_ but they let him tag along sometimes and that made it all right.

When he was older, he was _Dumbass_ and _Ox_ but the pilots paid him for grunt work and that made it all right.

When he left home, he was _The Bruiser_ and _The Hick_ but the whores pretended that his credits meant he was charming and sophisticated and that made it all right.

When he was dying, he was _foolhardy_ and _stubborn_ and _a gorram idiot_.

But He held his hand and She kissed his lips and They said goodbye with tears on their cheeks and that made it all right. 


	17. whole

**prompt: love

* * *

**She learns how to knit and cooks his favorite meals. 

She kisses the scars on his chest and shoulders and legs. She strokes his back when he wakes in a panic. She names his new girls and remembers them all. She moves in closer when others back down. She calls him names when he won't let it go.

She hands him their child and lies down to sleep.

She hits him hard when he's being an ass. She cries when he leaves and laughs when he's home. She hugs his mother and father and holds Matty's hand. She pulls him back when he wants to give in. She pushes him forward when he wants to retreat.

She stands behind him, beside him, before him.

She moans his name as he touches her there. She giggles beneath him when he licks at her neck. She scratches his back when he pushes inside her. She tugs on his hair as he fades into sleep. She cuddles him closer in the dark of the night.

She smiles when he stares and she whispers, "Me, too."

He looks in her eyes and believes what he sees.

He looks in her eyes and his heart starts to beat.


	18. fast

**prompt: hate

* * *

Warning:** This one got completely away from me. Proceed with caution. (Rated M for violence)  
---- 

He hefts the bottle and pours another shot but it lands in a puddle next to the glass and he snorts and tries again and the puddle starts to run across the table.

The whore on his lap shrieks with laughter and it pierces his ears like a siren and rattles his brain and he wants to stand up and dump her on the floor but his legs won't move right.

So he holds the bottle up to his mouth instead and lets the whiskey burn down his throat and he swallows a gasp that makes his eyes water and she shrieks again.

He doesn't see what's so gorram funny about a man trying to drink himself stupid so he turns his head away when she starts mauling his neck and the man he's been working with the past few weeks meets his stare from across the bar and lifts his shot glass in a toast.

He lifts his bottle in kind and a stream of whiskey falls right down the front of the whore's dress and she jumps off his lap and starts cussing and screeching and it sounds the same as her laughter and a chuckle rolls up out of his belly and he doesn't try to stop it because he's afraid he'll start to cry if he does.

She cuffs him on the side of the head and stomps off and a man at the next table leans closer and shakes his head and berates him for letting such a fine piece of trim get away.

He growls at him to mind his own gorram business and takes another pull from the bottle and the whore's at the back of the bar with the other girls who aren't busy and she's raining curses down on him and his mother and his mother's mother and none of them are going to come near him for the rest of the night.

He drains the rest of the bottle and blearily thinks about all that whiskey he wasted on the table and he's got half a mind to lap it up like a dog and maybe just that little bit more will be enough to stop his brain from spinning out images he wants to forget.

The table looms up at him as he shifts forward and he jerks back a little at how fast it's moving and his elbow hits something hard and soft and he hears a rush of breath and a curse and he slides his head around to see what he hit but his brains and his eyes haven't quite decided to follow and the room smears to one side.

Something grabs at his arm and hauls him up like a rag doll because now his arms aren't working too well either and his legs are still trying to work out how to dump the whore off his lap and then there's a fist in his face and the floor is jumping up to greet him.

The whore's back at the table and she shrieks in time with the kicks that land on his chest and she starts to sound like that woman last night and he should have stopped his partner when he realized was happening but he was scared and he's still just a kid and he didn't know what to do so he just ran away.

He's curled up in a ball on the floor and his hands flail out to grab the boots that are flying at him but it's all a blur and then he hears his partner's voice and a boot lands on his stomach one more time and he vomits all over the floor.

Then the floor falls away from him and he's propped on somebody's shoulder and his boots skid through the vomit and he's skating out the door and his partner is saying something in his ear and he can't get away and that woman's still screaming and his eyes roll back in his head.

-

He wakes the next day in a dark room that reeks of sour beer and piss.

His partner is snoring on the bed and his fat wallet is resting on a scrap of fabric ripped from a woman's blouse.

He pulls Lenore from her holster and fires one round into the man's chest.

He wants to keep shooting but it would be wasting bullets.

His partner opens his eyes and grunts as his blood darkens the front of his shirt.

He picks up the man's wallet and his own bag of gear.

His partner gasps, "Why?"

He says, "God's too slow," and he watches the man die.

He stops at the jail on his way to the docks and gives the wallet and the fabric to the sheriff.

He tells the lawman that he got it off a man who was bragging about a woman in an alley two nights past.

He turns on his heel and walks out the door before the sheriff's mouth opens to ask a single question.

God's too slow but he's always been fast and it may be too little too late but it's done.

And it's right.


	19. enough

**prompt: isolation

* * *

**After thirty-four bowls of watered-down protein and at least as many days without seeing the sun, Jayne had finally had enough.

When the reinforced door to the hole he'd called home for a month opened to reveal three guards heavily laden with guns and billy clubs, he didn't so much as blink. It took all of them to wrestle him onto his feet and up the stairs to the basement level of the prison. His feet dragged on the concrete floor and the guards grunted. When they reached a security checkpoint, one of them took his hand off Jayne's arm long enough to fumble a key into the lock.

Jayne let his whole body go limp. The dead weight knocked the two remaining guards off balance and they stumbled back, their hands slipping off his body.

With a speed he barely even knew he possessed, he body-checked the guard into the heavily reinforced door as it swung open and wrestled the gun off his hip. Holding it was awkward, but the _shǎ zi_ had bound his wrists in front of him and he easily wrapped both hands around the grip.

He squeezed the trigger twice and two guards fell, their hands falling away from their guns to clutch at their stomachs. Not the prettiest aim in the world, but gut-shot would get the job done. He hadn't had that particular pleasure himself, but he'd seen plenty of men lose all sense of reality while they tried to push their innards back in.

The first guard was knocked out at his feet. Jayne took a minute to grab the ring of keys off his belt.

He stuffed the gun down the front of his pants and winced as the heat of the barrel scorched his skin. The binders slipped off his wrists after a few frantic wiggles of the control wand and clattered to the floor.

He ran blindly down long sterile corridors, turning left, then right, then left again. He was listening for the alarm that was sure to be raised at any moment and trying to keep the prison's layout clear in his head.

* * *

_shǎ zi - _idiot 


	20. fancible

**prompt: flower

* * *

**"An' I _ain't_ no gorram prissy-ass sly boy!"

Zoe just slanted a look up at him and pinned him to the floor with the force of her stare. "Nobody's sayin' you are, but if you complain one more time, I'll shoot you where you stand. Put it on."

Jayne swallowed hard and clamped his lips together as she turned so Inara could fuss with her dress some more.

He didn't know what in the sphincter of hell had got him into this position and he couldn't see no clear way out of it.

He sighed. "Aw, hell. T'ain't like I never looked stupid afore."

Mal slapped him on the back as Kaylee beamed at them. "Think it makes us look downright dashin', all gussied up like this."

Jayne snorted as he shoved the rutting thing in the lapel of the jacket they'd made him wear.

_Woman's sure got a lot o' fancible notions fer a soldier_, he thought as they stepped down out of the ship. 


	21. fixed

**prompt: house

* * *

**The first time he saw it, he knew.

It was a miserable little place, all tumble-down and saggy. Half the windows were broken and the front door was falling off its hinges. As he walked through the rooms, he saw signs that a family of critters had been living there. The ceiling in the kitchen had caved in from water damage. The stairs groaned so loud under his feet that he thought they'd give way entirely and pitch him into the cellar.

But as he stood on the hill facing the front porch, a whisper from years ago echoed in his ears.

_fixed it up with two hands and made yourself a home_


	22. nights

**prompt: dream

* * *

**his hands skim over her flesh  
_ soft curves rise to meet him_  
his mouth maps the planes of her neck  
_ firm thighs cradle him, welcome him_  
his head falls onto her shoulder  
_ warm rush of breath caresses him_  
his fingers clench on her hips  
_ greedy hands lips fingers moans plead with him  
harder deeper there now now now_

He awakens with a start, body throbbing and skin too tight. The woman in his mind drifts away like smoke from a gun barrel. He rolls to his side and runs his hand over his hip, across his belly and lower. He presses his mouth into his pillow and groans, moans, sighs…

One of these nights, that gorram woman better finish what she starts. Man can't do for himself all the time. It ain't right.


	23. ghosts

**prompt: past

* * *

**Everybody's got their secrets.

He ain't no exception to that. There's things he's done that he don't want people knowing. Things that burn in his gut like cheap whiskey. Things that come creeping out of the shadows at night.

The captain's got secrets a-plenty and he don't do real good at hiding 'em. Zoë's a damn sight better at it, but her eyes are dark and she keeps to herself most days.

Kaylee couldn't keep nothing from nobody for longer than it takes to blink. Girl's just too sunny and bright to let the shadows stay for long. His ma would say she wears her mind on her face.

The doc probably likes to think he's all mysterious and the like but he's too much like Kaylee. Gives the whole thing away as soon as he walks into a room. Ain't nobody ever gonna trust him with much.

Inara's got something hidden away under them fancible clothes that she ain't sharing with none of 'em. Not even with the captain, no matter how hard he tries.

Shepherd had more'n his fair share. He tried to cover them with his hair and his collar but they crept out sometimes from his hands.

As near as he could tell, Wash didn't have many. Little man wasn't even like an open book – more like one of them cortex commercials that get stuck in your head for days.

The girl's different. She holds all of their secrets in her head and more, besides. He wonders if she's got the whole 'verse in there sometimes.

She dances across the cargo bay and whispers, "Everybody's got their secrets and I'll keep everybody safe."

Jayne shivers and frowns to cover it. Was a time he woulda just ignored her, but the weight of days gone by presses down on his chest and forces the words out of his throat.

"Let 'em stay where they are, girl. Ain't no sense in callin' up ghosts." 


	24. bigger

**prompt: future

* * *

**Matty used to keep him awake at night, talking nonsense about what might be. Jayne would bury his head under the pillows and wait for the chatter to stop. He figured there weren't much sense in predictions and planning. Like that song his ma used to sing, whatever happens'll happen – 'tain't worth worrying on.

He's changed his mind a fair bit in the past few years. He likes to keep a couple of steps ahead of himself, to be prepared for whatever _gou shi_ the 'verse sees fit to throw at him. He ain't the best thinker around but he knows enough about reading a situation to see where it's gonna end up.

Like right now, for instance. Soon as Tight Pants over there started flapping his jaw about bigger cuts and private bunks, the rusty wheels in Jayne's head started to spinning.

A bigger cut means more money to send home to Ma without feeling the pinch none. Free run of the mess? Hell, that right there'd be enough to sway him to signing on, on account of he's felt his belly stuck to his ribs more times than he'd care to think about. And gorrammit if having a bunk to hisself don't sound like a little slice of heaven gliding through the black.

What fixes it for him, though, is how neither of 'em flinches when he plugs Marco. Them rusty wheels click into place and his whole path lines up before him. Whether he cleaves to 'em like they done to each other or they leave him to go his own way, he can see, plain as day, that they ain't never gonna give him cause to watch his own back.

It's been a long time since he felt that. He reckons that's enough to hang the rest of his life on.

"How big a room?"


	25. quit

**prompt: alcohol

* * *

**He quit drinking the day he moved into that rattletrap house. It was partly a matter of convenience, as there wasn't a single settlement within comfortable walking distance. He didn't see the need for wasting fuel and coin on a trip to town to get blind-drunk when there were more important things still needed. 

Late at night, though, as he beds down on the warped floor in the living room and peers up at the stars visible through the hole overhead, he admits the real reason he hasn't touched a drop in weeks.

His early childhood was awash in his ma's tears as she waited up, night after night, for a man who seldom remembered he had a home. Matty would lift up the covers and Jayne would crawl into bed and the two of them would stay wrapped around each other until sleep carried them far from the sound of Ma's tears.

When he first struck out on his own, Jayne tried not to fall into the same pit that his pa had. He did okay for a few months, but eventually the twin temptations of a pocket full of coin and lap full of woman wore him down. He spent almost two years in a fog of stick-em-ups and drink-em-downs before a whore and her boyfriend rumbled him on Persephone.

He stayed relatively sober after that, not wanting to be taken for an easy mark. As Persephone faded from his mind, he relaxed his guard somewhat and started drinking again. Never anything like his first years in the black, but he wasn't opposed to blowing off steam now and again.

After Higgins's Moon, he drank even less. Until the Reavers came. He was proud of how well he held up in that fight, but afterwards, he found himself reaching for the bottle more and more. He stumbled back to the boat and passed out at the bottom of his bunk's ladder more times than he cared to count.

Now, though, he stares up at the stars and doesn't miss the rounded curves of the bottle as it filled his hand. He doesn't miss the burn of whiskey as it rolled down his throat. He doesn't even miss the sweet haze that covered him like a blanket as he staggered up Serenity's ramp on too many nights and even more mornings.

He has something else to fill his hands now, something else to burn his throat, something else to blanket him in warmth. He's building a home and one day -- sooner than he knows -- he's going to be a pa.

Jayne Cobb has had enough of a mother's tears for one lifetime. He won't be the cause of any more.


	26. planet

**prompt: clouds

* * *

**"Wabbit! Wabbit!" The little boy bounced on the blanket, one pudgy hand stretched toward the sky.

"Ya reckon? Looks more like a squirrel or somesuch t'me."

The little boy giggled and threw one hand to his forehead. He shook his head and peered up at the man sitting beside him. "Don' be silly, daddy! It's a wabbit!"

"Now, silly's an awful strong word t'be usin' there, boy. How're ya so sure it ain't a squirrel? Ya ever seen one?"

Now the look the boy threw to the man beside him was pure exasperation. "Daddy, I seen 'em in one o' Momma's books. An' wabbits got little tails, like that un. Eveh'body knows that!"

"Well, ain't you a smarty! How'd ya get t'be so smart with a big dummy fer a pa like me?"

The boy climbs into the man's lap and tucks his head under his daddy's chin. "You ain't a dummy, Daddy. Momma says so."

"S'that right? Momma said so?"

The man moves his head to one side so as to avoid getting hit by the little boy's head as it nods up and down. "Uh huh. Sh'said she wouldn' be a Cobb if ya hadn'ta used ya bwain wight an' caught heh. An' she's gotta bwain th' size of a planet!" 


	27. pirates

**prompt: box

* * *

**He crouched in the dark and pressed his mouth against his knees. His breath was hot and moist against his skin. From outside, he could plates clanking together as Matty set the table for dinner. The smell of hot and sour soup drifted in through a crack near his head and tickled at his nose.

The floor trembled under him as Pa stomped into the kitchen in his heavy work boots. Matty said something and Pa replied, his voice rumbling through the room. Jayne shifted a little, trying to get an eye and an ear closer to the biggest crack.

"Y'know, Matty, I jist cain't figger where that brother o'yourn got to. You seen 'im?"

He pulled his head back a little as Pa's legs filled his field of vision and clapped a hand over his mouth so nobody could hear the giggles that threatened to spill out.

"Sure haven't, Pa. Think he ran off to join up with the pirates?"

Pa turned away and cocked one hand up on his hip. Jayne giggled harder and had to use both hands to stifle the sound.

"Don' rightly know. Guess I'll jist hafta sit a spell an' hope he comes home afore long…"

Jayne shrieked as the ceiling of his cave started to crumple under Pa's weight. He could hear Matty giggling across the room as Pa jumped up and uncovered him. He blinked at the sudden burst of light and the kitchen flared into view.

"I's right here th' whole time, Pa! I ain't gonna go join no pirates!"

He shrieked again as Pa scooped him up with two big arms and swung him around and around. The table, Matty's face and Ma's back flashed by and he felt Pa's laughter shaking up through those broad arms and into his belly.


	28. sun

**prompt: round

* * *

**The morning sun falls through the window and bathes the room in golden light. It warms the skin of his arm and face and dances over his eyelids until he rolls over with a groan. The sheets are cool under his outstretched hand and he reluctantly pries one eye open.

She is standing in front of the mirror, combing out her hair. Each stroke of her hand goes a little further than it needs to – she still ain't used to it only coming down to the tops of her shoulders. Hell, he ain't used to it yet. He'd kicked up a mighty fuss when she'd handed him the shears but gave in quicker than he'd care to admit once she started batting her big eyes at him.

He watches as she shifts awkwardly to drop the comb on the tall dresser to her left. The towel tucked over her breasts starts to slip and she huffs out a little laugh as she catches it.

A soft smile snakes across his face, stretching muscles that still feel new, as she carefully rewraps the fabric around her body again. Her delicate hands smooth over and under her belly and she turns to one side and looks in the mirror.

"I look like I swallowed the sun," she murmurs.


	29. three

**prompt: toys

* * *

**He stood at the top of a dusty hill on a shithole of a moon, sun beating down on his uncovered head, sweat trickling down his neck. At his feet were three bodies, lying in rusty-looking puddles of mud and blood.

He couldn't tell if they were male or female. Hell, they barely even looked human anymore. He wiped at his mouth and wished he had a skin of water or a bottle of whiskey or any gorram thing that would wash the metallic tang of blood and bile off his tongue.

Graham was somewhere behind him, still puking his guts up all over the ground. Lin was crouched down near what used to be the head of one of the bodies, muttering a prayer that wasn't gonna do nobody a lick of good.

Jayne raised his arm in a sorry attempt at crossing himself. It didn't seem right to just be standing over the bodies and not make some kind of a gesture. His hand was shaking and he grabbed onto the rifle to try and steady it.

God didn't see this shit, but that didn't mean they couldn't pretend.

He closed his eyes and forced himself to move away from the bodies toward what had once been their shuttle. They came here to do a job and he sure as hell didn't want to stick around any longer than he had to.

Maybe once this was over, he'd see about finding a berth on another ship. Bad enough he was working his way across the 'verse the way he was, but there was something that was just not right about following along to pick at the bones of the dead. Lin had insisted and he was still boss, but Jayne thought maybe there'd be a better one somewhere.

They'd been crossing a big section of dead space out near the far edge of the Rim when they'd come up hard on a debris field. Lin had noticed a weak signal coming from the nearest moon and had changed course. Jayne didn't know what to expect once they got there – he'd only been away from home for a couple of years and there was plenty of stuff in the 'verse he hadn't seen yet – so he was carrying just about every weapon he owned.

Lin ducked through the hole that had once been a blast door just as Jayne pulled out the last box of provisions he could find. Together they carried it all out to their little mule and strapped it down tight, neither one of 'em saying a word or looking around too much. Graham had finally stopped puking and was standing lookout, a gun in each hand.

Soon as they had the last box strapped down, Lin hopped into the pilot's seat and fired up the engine. Jayne looked at the bodies and thought about asking if they were gonna give 'em a proper burial. He looked at Lin and Graham and saw the muscles in their jaws clenched up like they were trying to hold something back.

He hopped up on the mule. "Don't seem right, just leavin' 'em like this."

Lin stared straight ahead, never once turning his head to where the three people were sprawled in the dirt. "Ain't right, but that don't mean we gotta take responsibility for it. And I ain't stickin' around long enough to see if them Reavers'll make me into one o' their playthings."

The engine roared as they rolled down the hill and Jayne tried to tell himself that was what was making his hands and legs and head shake. But, for weeks after, every time he closed his eyes, he saw them three bodies, lying in rusty-looking puddles of mud and blood. 


	30. burn

**prompt: train

* * *

**_11... 12... 13..._

His muscles bunched and shifted as he lifted the bar over his head, up and down, up and down... Floating up through the cargo bay, Jayne could hear metal pans banging around, soft peals of laughter and the doctor's voice skating under it.

_18... 19... 20..._

Overhead, there was a heavy _clunk_ as Inara opened her door and stepped onto the walkway. He craned his head back a little to try and catch a glimpse of her legs peeking out from under her heavy skirts. She met his eyes and gave a disgusted sniff before moving down the stairs.

He grinned as she disappeared from view.

His arms moved up and down, up and down, straining a little against the solid weight of the iron bar. Sweat was starting to stream down his neck and chest and gather in the hollow of his back.

_28... 29... 30..._

He lowered the bar onto the uprights and readjusted his grip, fingers flexing against the rough metal, then heaved upward again with an explosion of breath that seemed to echo around him.

_1... 2... 3..._

He closed his eyes and let his mind drift, let the ship drift away around him, until the burn in his arms was all that tethered him to the here and now. He lost count somewhere in the second set, somewhere in the midst of smooth metal and knuckle on bone and the silky texture of a good cigar. His arms kept going, up and down, up and down...

Lost in a world that encompassed only the bar in his hands and the bench against his back and the sensations in his mind, he didn't hear the whisper bouncing down from the catwalk above him.

"21... 22... 23..."


	31. straws

**prompt: fountain

* * *

**"I ain't getting in that thing."

"Last time I checked, I was still the one givin' the orders around here. Put. It. _On_."

"Hell. _No_!"

"It's not that bad, Jayne. See, it's got all these... pockets and... You could get three or four knives in there!"

"Shut your face 'fore I shut it for you, little man."

"Jayne. The cap'n said 'do it.' I suggest you do."

"Why the hell ain't you gotta be the one to wear it?"

"Because the last time she did, all three of us ended up soaked to the skin and gargling goldfish in the town square?"

"I'm warnin' you..."

"Shutting face."

"Look. We need him to pilot the damn thing, the buyer needs to see my face, and she's gonna kill us all dead if we make her do it again."

"But..."

"Put. On. The dress."

"Fine. But I hear one crack about my ass, you'll all be eatin' through straws the rest of your painfully short life."


	32. glass

**prompt: elevator

* * *

**He clung to the little brass handrail that wrapped around the tiny glass box as they whipped up through the air. A tiny whimper slipped past his lips as he watched the ground drop away under their feet. 

"Blessed Mother, keep your eyes on us and some other stuff I don't remember and protect us as you would your Son. Amen. Blessed Mother, keep your eyes on us and all that other stuff Ma says and protect us as you would your Son. Amen. Blessed Mother..." he raised his voice until he was almost shouting as the glass under his feet rattled.

"Don't be such a baby, Jayne. We're only going up three stories."


	33. clear

**prompt: marble**

* * *

There was no real epiphanic moment, no existential crisis, as perceptions changed and thing came clear for the first time.

There was the girl, knocking a brute to the polished floor of the bank with a well-timed kick before he could bring his Vera to bear.

There was the jailman under her boot, face grinding into the weather-beaten planks.

There was dancing around a campfire as he played songs his mother had taught him on a guitar missing half its strings.

There was a game on the cargo bay deck that he didn't break up and a happy smile of thanks that made him think he had heartburn.

There was a fist to the head and the world going woozy as she dragged him to the rendezvous.

There was the smirk on her face and an answering pull in his gut, a whispered "yes" and a "finally" as she drifted past him into his bunk.

There was yelling and threats and crying. There was getting put off the boat in the nearest backwater.

There was the girl, holding his hand.


	34. wait

**prompt: breath  
**

* * *

  
He waits by her bedside wearing a lumpy sweater whose arms are too short. It pulls across his stomach in a way that's not exactly flattering to his ego. He's expanded through the middle over the last ten years but he doesn't care all that much. Good living and rich food make him happy, so in a way, the gradual softening of his body makes him happy, too.

His eyes are still sharper than his wits. He holds his ma's hand and watches as her chest rises and falls in an uneven rhythm. He sees the pallor of her skin and the color of her veins through it. He sees the thinning hair at her crown and wonders where the brushes are. Maybe later, after she's rested, she'd like him to braid it for her, the way she'd taught him and Matty when they were kids.

He feels the bones in her hand, like a bird that's nested in his palm. If he's getting still larger as he ages, she is shrinking. All the troubles of her life seem to have weighed upon her until she curled under them. The raw-boned, bosomy ma of his childhood is now an old woman whose skin seems barely to stretch over her frame.

Downstairs he can hear voices, some he recognizes, others he doesn't. The doc (still a prissy, prickly bastard after all these years) is around someplace with a bag full of medicines that Jayne is grateful for, even if he doesn't know how to say it. Probably the shepherds have come to call again, and neighbors from town. Maybe even some of those hard-won friends from before he went planetside. Before he put down roots and laid down his arms.

He misses Matty suddenly, fiercely, like a bullet through his chest. She would know what to do and what to say. He can only sit and hold Ma's hand and wait.

He hopes he's waiting a long, long time.


	35. watch

**prompt: fog**

* * *

If there's one thing he knows, it's when things turn downright creepifying. But in his line of work there ain't a lot of leeway and getting out of things once they been promised.

That's how he ended up pulling the last watch in a gorram graveyard and trying not to jump at every rustle.

"I don't like this," Wash says, again.

"I heard you the first eight times. Shut up."

"Oh my god, you _can_ count!"

Jayne's too busy tracking something moving just on the edge of their puddle of light to reply. He jerks a hand out to his side, palm down, and Wash wastes no time flattening himself on the ground.

All around them, shapes loom up out of nowhere and disappear just as fast as the wind shifts, bringing the smell of damp and decay. Jayne checks his wrist. Four more hours or so and they'll be able to slip away back to the boat and their bunks.

Whatever was moving finally stops or goes away and Jayne smacks Wash on the shoulder.

"Your ma ever tell you about the Creeper?" he asks and snickers when the other man almost whimpers.


	36. credits

**prompt: fantasy**  


* * *

About every two or three jobs they pull, Kaylee gets her hooks into Mal and they get a couple of extra credits to spend on a matinee. Sometimes it takes longer, or they're running too fast all of a sudden to take the time for even a piss, and Kaylee pouts until Mal lets her shuffle through the Cortex for old vids she's seen a thousand times before. She really likes the ones with princesses and elegant fight scenes and kissing and dancing.

Jayne doesn't mind them much either. Most of the princesses sure do like to get caught out in their fancies and to swoon over any big strong man who gets in their way.

What he really likes, though, are the stories about monsters and aliens and shit. Sometimes they have princesses in 'em too. He saw this one once that was supposed to be like some old story from Earth-that-was, where everybody was secretly related to everybody else and also part-dragon. His favorite part was when the good guy and the bad guy started fighting and turned into dragons halfway through. They flew up into the sky and crashed into buildings, clawing and biting and flapping wings at each other.

Some of them he doesn't like so much. There's a series of vids that Zoe likes with creepy-crawlies and things that ain't Reavers but get close enough to the stories he's heard. She watches them with Wash, who pretends it don't bother him but always volunteers for the night watch afterward so he can sit up in the light with his eyes open.

Mal don't watch none of the vids and he always bitches up a storm whenever anyone else wants to. Jayne don't figure that whoever they're running from the most recent time is going to be able to track them by the Cortex credits they use, but he also figures that he'll let Mal have his little bitching sessions. He runs out of steam pretty fast and stomps down to his bunk to avoid them all for a couple of hours.

And it's easier than trying to explain why he wants to watch the dragon movie one more time.


	37. green

**prompt: field**  


* * *

He tried farming. Twice.

The first time was a year or two after he'd left home. The crew he'd been running with had a brother who'd got paroled, so they didn't need the green kid anymore. He'd rolled off his bunk at the boarding house just in time to see their bucket of rust skimming out of sight at the edge of town. A wizened old man had liked the set of his shoulders and the muscles cording his upper arms and hired him on as a farmhand for the summer.

He'd lasted all of six weeks. It was hot, dusty, back-breaking, blue-streak-cursing, underpaid, underfed, underappreciated work and he'd taken maybe too much of a shine to the farmer's great-granddaughter than he ought to have done. Plus, it was more than an hour each way to walk to the nearest tavern (and the beer tasted worse than horse piss) and not worth the trouble. At the time, Jayne thought he would go _feng le_ if he'd stayed.

Almost thirty years to the day he'd left that farm and hitched a ride to the next nearest moon, he tried again.

He wanted to run cattle on the land but there wasn't much left for livestock after all the credits they'd spent on repairs to the house. There was also the tiny problem of he didn't know what to do with a gorram cow except move it from one pen to another, so his idea didn't get much farther than the wishing stage.

So, he grew stuff instead. Green stuff that he didn't know how to pronounce the name of, some dozen or so rows of taters, and every kind of leafy growing thing he still refused to eat if he could get away with it. The crops didn't do too bad the first couple of years, and though Jayne took the credit for it, everyone in town knew he was just the muscle around the place.

When the rains set in and didn't let up for months at a time, they switched their crops from taters and roots to rice and a delicate watery something-or-other that fetched up to forty times its weight in gold. Then came the drought, and everything withered up and blew away when his back was turned, it seemed. They were lucky enough to be sitting on a natural spring of some kind so they couldn't get run off their property the way some of the others in town had, but that was the end of his farming. He'd lasted all of a half-dozen years.

Stopping his neighbors from getting run off was the first time he'd tried real law-making, though. He hoped he wouldn't have to do it again.


	38. cloud

**prompt: rain**

* * *

On some planets they have these fancy weather-controlling systems where if they think it hasn't been sunny enough, they do some hocus-pocus stuff. The next day, there ain't a cloud in the sky.

It don't seem right.

He grew up on a mudhole of a planet in the back of nowhere and, sure, he wouldn't've minded too much if someone had done that once in a while. There's something that's just not right about messing with the weather like that. He mentioned it in passing once, like it was no big deal. Like it only just crossed his mind as he ate his lunch and wasn't something he worried on from time to time.

The doc went into some long spiel about weather patterns and erratic something or other. Jayne tuned him out around the fifth word as a habit, keeping his brain humming along just to pick up on any complaints about himself or something he might let slip about his sister that he might maybe be able to use for leverage. Book had seemed to enjoy the conversation, though.

Kaylee was the only one to ever mention it again, about six or seven months later. She came at him with that soft, sad look on her face, like he'd just ruined one of her pretty dresses or messed up all her spanners.

"Do you really think people who live on those weather-controlled planets are doin' something bad? Like they're messin' with something they shouldn't?" she asked. He watched her pick at the paint on her nails and tried to figure out why the hell she cared enough to ask.

"I don't know. I guess not," he lied.


	39. bundle

**prompt: letter**

* * *

Ma has never missed his birthday, not in all the years he's been moving from one place to the next. He still hasn't quite worked out yet how she figures where he'll be and when so that he gets a package from her on time.

He and Matty learned early on not to underestimate her, though.

Everything she's sent to him since he left home is wrapped up in a neat bundle under his bunk. On long lonely stretches between jobs, when his skin starts to itch a little and the whole ship starts feeling too small, he unwraps everything and lays it out on the floor to pick through the memories.


	40. weeds

**prompt: lake**

* * *

The first time Jayne ever saw a naked lady was when he was twelve years old. He was stamping down grass in a field behind the old schoolhouse instead of looking for Pa at the bar when he heard people talking real quiet, like they were trying not to be heard. He peered over a clump of weeds and kept the image in his head for four more years.

The first time Jayne ever touched a naked lady was when he was sixteen. This time he was one of the people talking real quiet, like he was trying not to be heard over the sound of waves lapping up on the pier.

The whole time he was sure there were nosy little creeps peering through the weeds.


	41. mark

**prompt: stain

* * *

**It's the fanciest shirt he's ever owned: splashy red dancing girls on a soft white cloth. It buttons up the front with what he thinks are pearls, and the band collar lies flat against his neck without straining. The cuffs are nice and sharp until halfway through the night, when they start to droop and suck up every puddle on the table. He undoes the pearls at his wrists and shoves the sleeves up to his elbows when he sidles up to the pool table in the back. When they make for the black the next morning, he spends a good hour rinsing it out in the kitchen sink, hoping like hell that lipstick don't leave a mark.


	42. promises

**prompt: bound

* * *

**Promises were made to be broken; he'd learned that lesson early and often. He never did have the gift for gab like some folks and as time wore on, he found it was a whole hell of a lot easier to just grunt and nod. It felt like less of a betrayal to go back on a grunt, anyway.

After a while, he stopped pretending he even meant it when he nodded. There weren't nobody he was beholden to except for Ma and Matty, anyway.

About two months after he joined up with Serenity, he realized he was falling back into meaning what he said. It came up on him kinda sneaky-like, too. One day he was holding a gun on a real shifty fella and when Mal told him to hump back to the boat with the loot and tell Wash to fire up the engines, he was halfway up the ramp before he realized he hadn't given a single thought to just running off with the credits.

It took at least three days and any number of not-so-veiled threats from Zoe for him to come out of his piss-poor mood after that.


	43. advice

**prompt: strain

* * *

**"So, you like guns, huh?"

Jayne grunted and kept loading bullets into the rifle's spare clip.

"I don't much care for them, myself. Too loud. And I always seem to get my hand pinched somehow. Like this one time when the Captain took me out for practice, I must have come home with-"

"Ain't you got some flyin' to do or somethin', little man?"

"Nah, got her on autopilot. She'll fly true. So like I was saying, my whole hand was black and blue. Hurt like anything, I'll tell you what. Now, I don't mind a little pain now and again-"

Jayne interrupted. "I ain't got no pull with Zoe so I ain't gonna be able to talk you up none."

"That's not- I'm trying to make conversation!" Wash sputtered.

"Aw hell, man, nothin' you say's gonna change her mind about you if you keep whining about what all you don't like about what she does."

That shut him up. Wash sat at the table, all dejected like, moping at his bowl of noodles.

Jayne finished up with the rifle and moved on to the bandoliers. The silence stretched out between them for so long that he almost wished he hadn't interrupted Wash in the first place. Sometimes it felt kind of like kicking a puppy and gorram if that didn't start to make things uncomfortable.

"Maybe you should try shaving off that thing growin' on your lip," he offered.


	44. pretend

**prompt: hard  


* * *

**Jayne has spent half a lifetime pretending he don't give a shit about nobody. Even after he proves that he does, he keeps right on pretending. (He's still pretty sure that they put something in that mudder's milk to make him go thinking all crazy.)

Mal lets him get away with it, mostly, figures there's no sense in poking a bruise once it's healed up some. And anyway, it's only funny again once you can laugh about how it happened and they still haven't scraped all the mud out of their boots.

Kaylee just rolls her eyes and squeezes his hand when they meet in the hatchway on their way in to dinner.


	45. hatch

**prompt: cold  


* * *

**Jayne was on a ship once where a guy got spaced.

He was never real clear on the details of what happened to get them to that point; there was a lot of he-said, he-said, and no one willing to clue the new guy in.

He'll always remember what happened when they got to that point, though. The boss and his muscle dragged the sorry bastard out of his bunk in the middle of ship's night and down through the bowels of the boat. Jayne had been deep into a card game with one of the grease monkeys and got swept up in the crowd following along down to the airlock.

The guy had pleaded and cried, snot running down his face and neck. The boss was hard-faced and quiet as they wrestled him through the hatch and sealed it behind him.

For months after, Jayne shivered whenever he heard the seals disengaging.


	46. dreams

**prompt: soft  


* * *

**When he gets sick, Ma lets him curl up in her bed after breakfast. He burrows facedown under the blankets, scratchy and too heavy against his fevered skin, and piles the pillows under his face.

He falls asleep to the clicking of her needles in the front room and dreams of horrible, twisted things that shove his head underwater and too close to the sun. He wakes in a panic, panting and sweating, and shouts until her hand smooths back his hair and lays him back down.

She rubs giant circles into his back and he spreads out the hand that's wedged under the pillows to soak up the coolness. He falls asleep to her lullaby and dreams of cotton candy sweetness and a vast, deep lake.


	47. honk

**prompt: feathers  


* * *

**He hates geese almost as much as he hates running out of ammo. Not as much as running out of credits before he's done with dinner or carrying pain in the ass rich folk on the run from the law though.

Not that he's got much room to talk on evading the authorities - he's just not about to go down for the likes of these two. But the doc is pretty good at patching him up so that counts in his favor some. He's barely even got any scars from the last two tussles.

The girl might be gorram nice to look at when she starts whirling around so her dress floats up but she's a downright nuisance most times, and even more when the doc's got her on some new drug they lifted from under the Alliance's nose. He thinks he might hate her even more than the geese and running out of ammo and holes in his socks combined when she comes up out of her crazy talkin' and acts almost like a real person. The whole time he's been sitting down here like some kind of dumbass out of a nursery rhyme, she's been hovering around him and asking question after question after question.

"Why are their beaks orange?"

"Do you know how they keep the water from coming in their nostrils when they dive for food?"

"Do you think you will be able to get that dung out of your pants or are they ruined?"

"Is the captain going to let us keep one for dinner?"

"For a pet?"

"Why are you stuffing your sleeves in your ears?"

"You do realize that when you start yelling, they just honk louder, don't you?"


	48. handle

**prompt: fly  


* * *

**He's been living planetside for more than ten years before he learns how to pilot a ship worth calling a ship. He's an old hand at all kinds of hoverships and personal craft - wouldn't've lasted more than a minute in his line of work without being able to make a quick getaway when he needed to.

A couple of the crews he'd run with had made noise from time to time about teaching him how to handle the ship, but he always moved on long before he could take anybody up on the offer. Mal never gave him that kind of vague promise and once Wash came on board there was no question about anybody else taking his seat.

After Miranda, the girl took to it like she'd been born to it. He reckons maybe she was, not born to it exactly but made into a part of the ship by whatever the hell they'd done to her. Wash was no slouch but some of the things she does with the ship are downright amazing.

When Zoe comes and asks for his help, only not in so many words, he's packing up and ready to go before she's even done making faces at the baby. They spend a week or two scooting between moons, avoiding patrols and coaxing information out of the last of her contacts, before they pick up the trail. When the shooting's all done and Mal's lying in a bunk below with two bullets in his leg, she shoves him into the pilot's seat and tells him to go.

He clips a couple of things he maybe shouldn't before they're shooting up into the sky but she doesn't say a word about it, just nods at him when she comes back up from whatever doctoring she could do.

After they get Mal to the doc in his fancy clinic, she spends another week showing him how to keep the ship straight before she takes him home.


	49. fuzzy

**prompt: high  


* * *

**Simon Tam is his new best friend in the whole of the 'verse. And any other 'verse! He's worth ten of any other person ever, except maybe for Ma, and he takes back every pissy word he's ever said against him.

That's right, every single one. Even the ones about how he clearly ain't got no stones if he's lettin' Kaylee go sulking around her bunk alone at night instead of keeping her company.

Gorrammit, she needs to stop shrieking like that. It ain't like he's saying nothing anybody else isn't thinking. And what the hell kind of doc is he anyway if he's letting women come in here and beat up on his patients when they're only trying to say nice things about him?

Yeah, all right, he'll keep quiet. He can't feel his lips anymore anyway so it's no big deal to keep 'em closed.

Ain't that a funny thing, not being able to feel your lips? It's like his face just sort of runs into his mouth- All right, he'll shut up. Gorram.

Has the bed always been this floaty in here? Feels like lying on a cloud. And the lights are so pretty, all sparkly and winking at him. Maybe them fairies'll come back, the ones that were up in the cockpit that one time.

Well what the hell, why's she laughing now? He's starting to think the doc's sister ain't the only one _feng le_ on the boat these days.

Naw, he doesn't mean that, not really. If Simon's his new best friend, then his sister must be... Something. It's hard to think with all the fuzzy in his head.


	50. freight

**prompt: low  


* * *

**Ma asks sometimes but he's real careful not to give her any details when he writes home. She thinks he's working freight or something respectable like that. And, well, he is working freight, after a fashion. He gets paid to move things around, usually with a gun in his hand but that don't make no never mind.

What Ma don't know can't hurt her, he tells himself.

He sends credits home, often as he can. She doesn't say much about Pa in her letters but he can read between the lines. The man weren't worth much to begin with, for all that he talked a big game, but she loves him and she'll stay with him until he drags her down for the last time.

Jayne hopes he'll be close enough to pick up the pieces when that happens.


End file.
